The War in China

Published:Iskra, No. 1, December 1900.


      Published according to theIskratext.Source:Lenin

	  Collected Works,


      Progress Publishers,1964,


      Moscow,Volume 4,


      pages372-377.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaandD. WaltersPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive


      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,

	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and

	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet

	Archive” as your source.•README

Russiais bringing her war with China to a close: a number of military

      districts have been mobilised, hundreds of millions of rubles have been

      spent, tens of thousands of troops have been dispatched to China, a number

      of battles have been fought and a number of victories won—true, not

      so much over regular enemy troops, as over Chinese insurgents and,

      particularly, over the unarmed Chinese populace, who were drowned or

      killed, with no holding back from the slaughter of women and children, not

      to speak of the looting of palaces, homes, and shops. The Russian

      Government, together with the press that kowtows to it, is celebrating a

      victory and rejoicing over the fresh exploits of the gallant soldiery,

      rejoicing at the victory of European culture over Chinese barbarism and

      over the fresh successes of Russia’s “civilising mission” in

      the Far East.

Butthe voices of the class-conscious workers, of the advanced

      representatives of the many millions of the working people, are not heard

      amid this rejoicing. And yet, it is the working people who bear the brunt

      of the victorious new campaigns, it is working people who are sent to the

      other end of the world, from whom increased taxes are extorted to cover

      the millions expended. Let us, therefore, see: What attitude should the

      socialists adopt towards this war? In whose interests is it being fought?

      What is the real nature of the policy now being pursued by the Russian

      Government?

Ourgovernment asserts first of all that it is not waging war against China;

      that it is merely suppressing arebellion, pacifying rebels; that it is helping the lawful government of

      China to re-establish law and order. True, war has not been declared, but

      this does not change the situation a bit, because war is being waged

      nonetheless. What made the Chinese attack Europeans, what caused the

      rebellion which the British, French, Germans, Russians, Japanese, etc.,

      are so zealously crushing?  “The hostility of the yellow race

      towards the white race,” “the Chinese hatred for European culture

      and


      civilisation”— answerthe supporters of the war. Yes! It is true the Chinese hate the Europeans,

      but which Europeans do they hate, and why?  The Chinese do not hate the

      European peoples, they have never had any quarrel with them—they

      hate the European capitalists and the European governments obedient to

      them. How can the Chinese not hate those who have come to China solely for

      the sake of gain; who have utilised their vaunted civilisation solely for

      the purpose of deception, plunder, and violence; who have waged wars

      against China in order to win the right to trade in opium with which to

      drug the people (the war of England and France with China in 1856); and

      who hypocritically carried their policy of plunder under the guise of

      spreading Christianity? The bourgeois governments of Europe have long been

      conducting this policy of plunder with respect to China, and now they have

      been joined by the autocratic Russian Government. This policy of plunder

      is usually called a colonial policy. Every country in which capitalist

      industry develops rapidly has very soon to seek colonies, i.e., countries

      in which industry is weakly developed, in which a more or less patriarchal

      way of life still prevails, and which can serve as a market for

      manufactured goods and a source of high profits. For the sake of the

      profit of a handful of capitalists, the bourgeois governments have waged

      endless wars, have sent regiments to die in unhealthy tropical countries,

      have squandered millions of money extracted from the people, and have

      driven the peoples in the colonies to desperate revolts or to death from

      starvation. We need only recall the rebellion of the native peoples

      against the British in


      India[1]and the famine that prevailed there, or think of the war the English are

      now waging against the Boers.

Andnow the European capitalists have placed their rapacious paws upon

      China, and almost the first to do so was the Russian Government, which now

      so loudly proclaims its “disinterestedness.” It

      “disinterestedly” took Port Arthur away from China and began

      to build a railway to Manchuria under the protection of Russian

      troops. One after another the European governments began feverishly to

      loot, or, as they put it, to “rent,” Chinese territory, giving good

      grounds for the talk of the partition of China. If we are to call things

      by their right names, we must say that the European governments (the

      Russian Government among the very first) have already started to partition

      China. However, they have not begun this partitioning openly, but

      stealthily, like thieves. They began to rob China as ghouls rob corpses,

      and when the seeming corpse attempted to resist, they flung themselves

      upon it like savage beasts, burning down whole villages, shooting,

      bayonetting, and drowning in the Amur River unarmed inhabitants, their

      wives, and their children. And all these Christian exploits are

      accompanied by howls against the Chinese barbarians who dared to raise

      their hands against the civilised Europeans. The occupation of Niuchuang

      and the moving of Russian troops into Manchuria are temporary measures,

      declares the autocratic Russian Government in its circular note of August

      12, 1900 addressed to the Powers; these measures “are called forth

      exclusively by the necessity to repel the aggressive operations of Chinese

      rebels”; they “cannot in the least be regarded as evidence of

      any selfish plans, which are totally alien to the policy of the Imperial

      Government.”

PoorImperial Government! So Christianly unselfish, and yet so unjustly

      maligned! Several years ago it unselfishly seized Port Arthur, and now it

      is unselfishly seizing Manchuria; it has unselfishly flooded the frontier

      provinces of China with hordes of contractors, engineers, and officers,

      who, by their conduct, have roused to indignation even the Chinese, known

      for their docility. The Chinese workers employed in the construction of

      the Chinese railway had to exist on a wage of ten kopeks a day—is

      this not unselfish on Russia’s part?

Howis our government’s senseless policy in China to be explained? Who

      benefits by it? The benefit goes to a handful of capitalist magnates who

      carry on trade with China, to a handful of factory owners who manufacture

      goods for the Asian market, to a handful of contractors who are now

      piling up huge profits on urgent war orders (factories producing war

      equipment, supplies for the troops, etc., are now operating at full

      capacity and are engaging hundreds of new workers). This policy is of

      benefit to a handful of nobles who occupy high posts in the civil and

      military services. They need adventurous policies, for these provide them

      with opportunities for promotion, for making a career and gaining fame by

      their “exploits.” In the interests of this handful of capitalists

      and bureaucratic scoundrels, our government unhesitatingly sacrifices the

      interests of the entire people. And in this case, as always, the

      autocratic tsarist government has proved itself to be a government of

      irresponsible bureaucrats servilely cringing before the capitalist

      magnates and nobles.

Whatbenefits do the Russian working class and the labouring people

      generally obtain from the conquests in China? Thousands of ruined

      families, whose breadwinners have been sent to the war; an enormous

      increase in the national debt and the national expenditure; mounting

      taxation; greater power for the capitalists, the exploiters of the

      workers; worse conditions for the workers; still greater mortality among

      the peasantry; famine in Siberia—this is what the Chinese war

      promises and is already bringing. The entire Russian press, all the

      newspapers and periodicals are kept in a state of bondage; they dare not

      print anything without permission of the government officials. This is the

      reason for the lack of precise information as to what the Chinese war is

      costing the people; but there is no doubt that it requires the expenditure

      ofmany hundreds of millions of rubles.It has come to our

      knowledge that the government, by an unpublished decree, handed out the

      tidy sum of a hundred and fifty million rubles for the purpose of waging

      the war. In addition to this, current expenditures on the war absorbone million rublesevery three or four days, and these terrific

      sums arebeing squandered by a government which, haggling over every kopek, has

      steadily cut down grants to the famine- stricken peasantry; which can find

      no money for the people’s education; which, like any kulak, sweats the

      workers in the government factories, sweats the lower employees in the

      post offices, etc.!

Ministerof Finance Witte declared that on January 1, 1900, there were two

      hundred and fifty million rubles available in the treasury. Now this money

      is gone, it has been spent on the war. The government is seeking loans, is

      increasing taxation, is refusing necessary expenditures because of the

      lack of money, and is putting a stop to the building of railways. The

      tsarist government is threatened with bankruptcy, and yet it is plunging

      into a policy of conquest—a policy which not only demands the

      expenditure of enormous sums of money, but threatens to plunge us into

      still more dangerous wars. The European states that have flung themselves

      upon China are already beginning to quarrel over the division of the

      booty, and no one can say how this quarrel will end.

Butthe policy of the tsarist government in China is not only a mockery of

      the interests of the people—its aim is to corrupt the political

      consciousness of the masses. Governments that maintain themselves in power

      only by means of the bayonet, that have constantly to restrain or

      suppress the indignation of the people, have long realised the truism that

      popular discontent can never be removed and that it is necessary to divert

      the discontent from the government to some other object. For example,

      hostility is being stirred up against the Jews; the gutter press carries

      on Jew-baiting campaigns, as if the Jewish workers do not suffer in

      exactly the same way as the Russian workers from the oppression of capital

      and the police government. At the present time, the press is conducting a

      campaign against the Chinese; it is howling about the savage yellow race

      and its hostility towards civilisation, about Russia’s tasks of

      enlightenment, about the enthusiasm with which the Russian soldiers go

      into battle, etc., etc. Journalists who crawl on their bellies before the

      government and the money-bags are straining every nerve to rouse the

      hatred of the people against China. But theChinese people have at no time and in no way oppressed the Russian

      people. The Chinese people suffer from the same evils as those from

      which the Russian people suffer—they suffer from an Asiatic

      government that squeezes taxes from the starving peasantry and that

      suppresses every aspiration towards liberty by military force; they

      suffer from the oppression of capital, which has penetrated into the

      Middle Kingdom.

TheRussian working class is beginning to move out of the state of

      political oppression and ignorance in which the masses of the people are

      still submerged. Hence, the duty of all class-conscious workers is to rise

      with all their might against those who are stirring up national hatred and

      diverting the attention of the working people from their real enemies. The

      policy of the tsarist government in China is a criminal policy which is

      impoverishing, corrupting, and oppressing the people more than ever. The

      tsarist government not only keeps our people in slavery but sends them to

      pacify other peoples who rebel against their slavery (as was the case in

      1849 when Russian troops suppressed the revolution in Hungary). It not

      only helps the Russian capitalists to exploit the Russian workers, whose

      hands it ties to hold them back from combining and defending themselves,

      but it also sends soldiers to plunder other peoples in the interests of a

      handful of rich men and nobles. There is only one way in which the new

      burden the war is thrusting upon the working people can be removed, and

      that is the convening of an assembly of representatives of the people,

      which would put an end to the autocracy of the government and compel it to

      have regard for interests other than those solely of a gang of courtiers.

[1]The reference is to the uprising for national liberation that began in

      India in 1857. The insurrection was suppressed by British troops in 1859.
